REVENGE OF THE NERDBALLS

REVENGE OF THE NERDS (1984)
dir: Jeff Kanew

REVENGE OF THE NERDBALLS
MAD #258, October 1985
w: Arnie Kogen
a: Mort Drucker

From Academy Awards for Teenage Movies.

Like most films of the genre, it doesn't age well. But of the dozens of films then where the nerds would be just like the jocks if they had the chance, install cameras in girls' dorms to spy on them, and trade up women like property as if exchanging a car for a better model, this is one of the more innocuous ones.

It involves Lewis and Gilbert (Robert Carradine, Anthony Edwards) enrolling in college and being picked on by the jocks and their girlfriends.

Its heart is in the right place defending nerds. We're all nerds. I'm a nerd. If you're reading this, you're the biggest nerd of all. But we're not 1984 nerds. Through modern eyes the non-consensual voyeurism is creepy, as is the rape scene mentioned ad infinitum everywhere else on the internet. In case you just got a computer, writers and bloggers have recalled there's a scene where a character gets back at a jock's girlfriend by pretending to be him wearing a mask and screwing her, then after impressing her with his technique takes off his mask and—surprise! It's really been a nerd all along!

Nobody thought anything of it then, but it wouldn't fly today and the people involved have renounced it, as they should. My take is that I don't like it either but it doesn't surprise me. If you watched 15 minutes of TV in the 80s (or flipped through an average issue of MAD) there'd be something unacceptable somewhere. This whole blog is dated taboos. What's weird to me is that wearing a mask means he isn't able to use his mouth, so his torso alone makes him this amazing sex machine.